History is messy. It isn't a straight line of progress or a simple tale of villains and heroes, and honestly, the link between Planned Parenthood and eugenics is one of those topics that makes people squirm because it involves both. You’ve probably heard the talking points. On one side, people claim the organization was built solely to eliminate certain populations. On the other, supporters sometimes act like the founder, Margaret Sanger, was a flawless saint of women's rights. The truth is somewhere in the middle, buried under decades of rhetoric and genuine historical documents that show a much more complicated, often uncomfortable reality.
Sanger was a nurse. She saw women dying from self-induced abortions in the tenements of New York. This drove her. But she also lived in an era—the early 20th century—where eugenics was considered "settled science" by the elite. It wasn't a fringe movement back then. It was taught at Harvard. It was cheered at the 1912 International Eugenics Congress.
The Complicated Origin of Planned Parenthood and Eugenics
We have to talk about the 1920s. At that time, the eugenics movement was obsessed with "better breeding." While we associate the term with the horrors of Nazi Germany now, back then, many American intellectuals thought they could "improve" the human race by discouraging "unfit" people from having kids. Margaret Sanger leaned into this. She didn't necessarily do it because she hated specific races—her primary focus was on "mental fitness" and poverty—but she used the language of the eugenics movement to make birth control more palatable to the people in power.
It was a strategic alliance. Or maybe she really believed some of it. Probably both.
In her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, she wrote about the "heavy burden" of the "unfit." It’s harsh stuff to read today. She argued that charity just encouraged the "feeble-minded" to procreate, which she saw as a threat to society. This is the bedrock of the connection between Planned Parenthood and eugenics. By framing birth control as a tool for "racial progress" (using the word "race" to mean the human race or specific social classes), she gained support from wealthy donors who weren't particularly interested in women's liberation but were very interested in social engineering.
The Negro Project Myth vs. Reality
You can’t talk about this without mentioning the "Negro Project" of 1939. This is usually the smoking gun people point to. They quote a letter Sanger wrote to Dr. Clarence Gamble where she said, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
If you stop the quote there, it sounds like a confession of genocide. But if you read the rest of the letter, she was actually talking about hiring Black ministers to lead the project so that the community wouldn't misinterpret their intentions as genocidal. She was worried about bad optics. Does that make it better? Not necessarily. It shows a massive amount of paternalism. She thought she knew what was best for a community she wasn't a part of. But the project itself was actually requested by Black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, who felt that access to contraception was a matter of social justice and health for Black families.
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It’s a weird, tangled web of genuine healthcare advocacy and the high-brow elitism of the eugenics era.
How the Organization Changed
By the 1940s, the world saw what eugenics looked like in practice in Germany. The "science" lost its luster fast. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (the name changed in 1942) began to distance itself from the "population control" rhetoric and moved toward "planned parenthood"—the idea that every child should be wanted.
They basically pivoted.
But the ghost of the past stayed. Even as the organization became a pillar of the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s, the foundational links to eugenics remained a point of contention. Critics point out that a disproportionate number of clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood counters by saying they go where the need is greatest—where people lack insurance and access to basic OB-GYN care.
In 2020, the organization finally had a public "reckoning." Karen Seltzer, the then-chair of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, acknowledged Sanger's "legacy of white supremacy." They even removed Sanger's name from a Manhattan health center. It was a massive admission. They basically said: Yeah, our founder had some ideas that were deeply harmful, and we have to own that.
Modern Statistics and the "Targeting" Debate
Does the history of Planned Parenthood and eugenics impact how healthcare is delivered today? That’s the million-dollar question. If you look at the data from the Guttmacher Institute, Black women have higher rates of unintended pregnancy and, consequently, higher rates of abortion.
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Some see this as a continuation of the old eugenics mission.
Others see it as the result of systemic failures in healthcare, education, and economic stability.
If you look at the actual locations of clinics, a study by the American Journal of Public Health found that the vast majority of clinics are in neighborhoods that are majority white. However, the discussions around these clinics often ignore the fact that Planned Parenthood provides way more than just abortions. They do STI testing, cancer screenings, and provide basic contraception. For many people in "healthcare deserts," it's the only place they can go.
Nuance in the Archives
It's easy to look back at 1925 and judge everyone by 2026 standards. But we have to be careful. Sanger was a person of her time who held contradictory views. She was a radical who went to jail for handing out pamphlets to poor immigrant women. She was also someone who spoke at a Silver Lake KKK rally in 1926 (though she later described them as a bunch of "morons" in her autobiography, the fact that she went at all is telling of her "reach everyone" strategy).
She wasn't a "eugenicist" in the sense that she wanted to kill people. She was a eugenicist in the sense that she thought the world would be better if "certain" people didn't have ten kids they couldn't feed. It was a cold, clinical, and ultimately discriminatory worldview that prioritized the "stock" of humanity over individual agency.
Key Facts to Remember:
- Sanger supported the Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision, which allowed for the forced sterilization of the "unfit."
- She disagreed with the Nazis' use of eugenics for "racial purity," as her focus was on "mental deficiency."
- Prominent Black leaders like Mary McLeod Bethune served on the boards of her organizations.
- The modern Planned Parenthood has formally denounced Sanger's eugenicist leanings while still defending her work in birth control access.
Taking Action: Navigating the Information
When you’re trying to figure out where you stand on this, don't just read memes. Memes are where nuance goes to die. If you want to actually understand the link between Planned Parenthood and eugenics, you have to look at the primary sources.
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First, read Margaret Sanger’s own writings. The Pivot of Civilization and Woman and the New Race are both in the public domain. You will see her brilliance and her prejudice on the same page. It’s jarring.
Second, look at the 2020-2021 statements from Planned Parenthood. They’ve published several deep dives into their own history. They aren't hiding it anymore. They’re trying to "decolonize" their healthcare model.
Third, check the data on maternal mortality. Regardless of the history, the current reality is that Black women in the U.S. die from pregnancy-related causes at three times the rate of white women. This is the "health equity" lens that the modern organization uses to justify its presence in various communities.
Practical Steps for Research
- Search the Margaret Sanger Papers Project. This is a massive digital archive at NYU. You can read her actual letters and see how her thoughts evolved—or didn't—over decades.
- Compare historical eugenics laws. Look up which states had sterilization laws (over 30 did) and see how the birth control movement overlapped with those legal structures.
- Analyze current clinic services. Go to the Planned Parenthood website and look at their annual report. See what percentage of their "service units" are actually related to the things critics claim are "eugenicist" versus routine screenings.
- Read Black feminist critiques. Scholars like Dorothy Roberts (author of Killing the Black Body) provide an essential perspective. Roberts critiques both the eugenics of the past and the ways the modern reproductive rights movement has sometimes failed women of color.
Understanding this isn't about "canceling" a historical figure or blindly defending an institution. It’s about acknowledging that the tools for liberation (birth control) were sometimes forged in the fires of very ugly ideologies. You can support reproductive access today while still being honest about the fact that its roots are tangled in the eugenics movement. Being an informed citizen means holding both those truths at the same time without blinking.
For those looking to dive deeper into the legal history of this era, researching the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor provides a stark look at how these ideas were codified into American law long before they ever reached Planned Parenthood's doors. Understanding the ERO's influence explains why so many people in the 1920s, including Sanger, saw eugenics as a legitimate path to social reform.